


first love song

by dollylux



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 07:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16090550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: Fuck love. Billy didn't even have warmth.





	first love song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homo_pink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homo_pink/gifts).



> little valentine's day fic for my beautiful love. 
> 
> (posting to ao3 finally so it doesn't get lost on tumblr again.)

Love isn’t real.

Billy’s always known that. It’s not inherent to all people, doesn’t compel them to make sacrifices or tread lightly around a tender heart. And he doesn’t know for a fact, but he’d bet his career and his dignity that his mother didn’t touch him as a newborn. Didn’t hold him or rock him when he cried. Billy’s read studies. Watched documentaries about chimpanzees and controlled observations of infants with their mothers. He knows that a lack of physical affection in the first several months of life stunts brain growth and lays the foundation for a lifetime of being severely fucked up in constantly new and surprising ways.

Fuck love. Billy didn’t even have warmth.

He once told Miss Sherri, his most trusted caregiver at Mercy Home for Children, that he was always cold. It came on the heels of being bedridden for four days, of not having the will to do anything beyond tugging the scratchy blankets up to his chin and staring at the peeling blue paint on the wall beneath the window. Blue was supposed to be a calming color. To remind all Billy’s fellow lost boys and girls of the ocean. Of a summer sky, maybe. It reminded Billy of glaciers from the picture books in the crappy library downstairs, reminded this particular seven-year-old boy of nights spent in a dark room with other sleeping children, of waking up from nightmares with wet sheets and wet pajamas and shivering in his own piss for the rest of the night so he didn’t get in trouble with the headmistress. Again. 

The piss-stained sheets were always blue.

Miss Sherri had thrown an extra blanket on Billy and told him to take his vitamins in the morning. A boy with very few words of his own doesn’t know how to explain that the cold goes deeper than that. Deeper than bones.

Even now in the scorching heat of Fallujah in July where his phone is telling him it’s 111°F, he’s wearing a sweatshirt that isn’t his own, wool socks, and a beanie pulled down low to cover his ears.

Maybe Billy was just born frozen. Maybe he lacks the necessary tools to ever thaw out.

“Shit, Bill. You’re makin’ me sweat just lookin’ at you.”

Frank’s wearing a dingy white wifebeater with pit stains and fatigues rolled up to mid-calf. His big ol’ monkeytoes are digging into the packed sand beneath his feet, and he doesn’t seem to care much that he looks fuckin’ ridiculous.

“You look fuckin’ ridiculous,” Billy tells him, just in case. He’d been dozing. Thinking about a night two weeks ago when Frank had been on top of him in the dark, moving inside of him while the other guys slept. They learned a long time ago to be quiet, to keep secrets. Billy always just hopes that nobody looks too close at his eyes when he’s looking at Frank Castle.

“Me?” Frank’s head moves back on his neck as he touches a hand to his chest, offended. He sits down at the foot of Billy’s bed, just close enough that Billy can stretch his legs out and rest his feet on Frank’s lap. Frank sighs like that wasn’t exactly why he sat where he did, and after a cursory glance around, he looks up to meet Billy’s eyes.

The heat there could melt the sun.

“Why you always dress like a snowman? Hm?” Big hands engulf one of Billy’s long feet, cupping it so that warmth seeps slowly from Frank’s skin into Billy’s. He wants to close his eyes and savor it, but Frank’s looking at him. Billy never wants to miss that.

“Just run cold,” Billy replies with a shrug. It’s an old conversation, a tired one, but Billy’s never said much beyond that. Has never told Frank his theory, that he was never held enough as a baby, that it fucked up his senses, somehow. And that’s just for starters. “Lucky for me, I gotta big, strong man who lends me his big, smelly sweatshirts when mine’s dirty.”

Frank grins, a flash that’s for Billy and Billy alone. He licks his lips and runs the firm pad of his thumb up the arch of Billy’s foot, making it tremble a little for how fucking good it feels. He makes sure Frank sees the way his thighs spread, makes sure he sees the futile invitation.

They can never do anything when it’s light out. Not here. Can’t do anything in the heat of the day when Billy could have the sun and Frank Castle beating down on him at the same time. Bodies that move together like theirs are meant for shadows, for nights without stars. Billy’s always meant to be a secret.

“You steal my sweatshirt all the time,” Frank says, his voice quiet. He’s massaging Billy’s foot from toe to heel, the movement distracting from the way Billy’s other foot finds a home between Frank’s legs, the heft of his cock caught in the tight arch of it. He rubs him off and watches the way Frank’s face reddens as he hardens up almost instantly. Frank’s voice is more gruff than usual when he finds it again. “You like the way I smell.”

“I do,” Billy murmurs, indulging in the way his heart races, in the free-flying way Frank makes him feel. “You keep me warm, too.”

Frank’s face goes grave, serious in a way it only does when he’s thinking about his kids or about Billy’s past. And he only knows the broadest sketches of that.

“Tonight,” Frank says, so low Billy has to strain to hear it. “You come to me, you got it? I’ll warm you up.”

Billy’s breathless, and he hides it with a smirk.

“You finally gonna set me on fire, Frankie?”

Frank tickles the bottom of Billy’s foot and gets a heel smashed into his balls for his trouble. He stands up and towers over Billy stretched out in his bed, off to lead drills with the newest bunch in the unit. His eyes are light again, but he’s not smiling.

“You heard me, soldier.”

“Yessir,” Billy says back, making sure Frank sees the way his teeth drag over his bottom lip. Frank always has a way of making Billy feel beautiful, like something to be held carefully rather than used up. Tired brown eyes scan Billy from sock to cap before he walks away, leaving the tent and Billy to pray for night.

 

Later, in the kind of dark silence only a desert has, Billy’s naked except his black wool socks that stop above his knees, the hard bones of which are pressed tight to his own chin. They’ll leave a bruise that he’ll find tomorrow and touch fondly. Frank’s hands are on him, holding him down, one clasped around his soft thigh while the other clamps around his throat. And it’s squeezing.

Billy’s never seen any real proof of love. Never felt it, anyway. But here, beneath a man who’s looking at him like he’s a greater marvel than the full moon and the hundreds of miles of visible stars above, when he’s full to bursting with him and his every breath is being given as a careful gift and he swears tonight’s the night when Frank’s going to crush him, going to grind him down into a fine powder that’ll blow away by morning, Billy thinks he might believe in love.

And he’s finally warm.

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable post on tumblr](https://dollyluxed.tumblr.com/post/178431555573/first-love-song-frank-castlebilly-russo)


End file.
